Mauthausen was a concentration camp in Austria, near the city of Linz, which opened in 1938. The location of the camp was near the local granite quarries so that the Nazis could use forced labour to extract the granite. Initially the prisoners at Mauthausen were mainly political opponents, &lsquoasocial&rsquo and criminals. After the occupation of France in 1940, there was an influx of Spanish prisoners to Mauthausen who had been imprisoned in France as anti-Franco forces during the Spanish Civil War. During its operation, it is estimated that nearly 200,000 prisoners were kept at Mauthausen, with at least 95,000 dying there. Over 14,000 of these were Jewish prisoners.
